Recently, the Image2000 user experience and satisfaction survey was made in order to identify and profile user communities, understand how the available data benefits the user communities and profile user requirements for future data holdings and services development. In this paper we present initial results and specifically we researched user communities, the perception of the availability of free spatial data, and the impact of the Image2000 access to data. The survey responses provided us with important information that could not be derived from server logs. It was possible to get a better idea of how users, especially European citizens became informed about the presence of geo-portals and the availability of public spatial information. A discussion is also made on the differences between 'users' and 'viewers' especially pertaining to the development of an automatic system to monitor usage patterns of people accessing publicly available geospatial data. An important conclusion of this survey is that most registered users were satisfied with the Image2000 data they downloaded and benefited from this access in some manner.